Territorial Issues
by UnassociatedUsername
Summary: After years of peace, with tensions rising between the Caldari and Gallente over old territorial disputes, a Gallente fleet makes a bold incursion into the heart of Caldari space. It might be just enough to start a full scale war. Rated T for future use of strong language, general space violence. This story is likely to wander wherever you guys see fit, so I appreciate reviews.
1. Isolated

_**18:00, July 27th, YC 118 - Perimeter, 12AU Beyond System Edge**_

Another boom rang out throughout the CNV Eyrie. "Idiots!" Shouted it s captain. Another chunk of ice had fallen out of the tractor beam of a nearby mining barge. He was beginning to get irritated. He and his ship had been sitting amongst a cluster of Hulk class mining barges about 200 strong, for a week now. "Tactical, status on all point defense batteries." he asked through gritted teeth. He was getting increasingly furious at the inexperience and ignorance of some of the miners. "All batteries forward of frame 1320 are operational, engineering section batteries are down for maintenance until 22:00." the tactical officer replied. "Very well, engage all moving, objects on a collision course that aren't transmitting IFF."

The manned barges from the Caldari Provisions corporation were crunching away at an incredibly expansive ice field nearly twelve astrometric units outside the edge of the Perimeter system. So close to the biggest trade hub in New Eden, the Caldari State was taking no chances. The Eyrie was Leviathan Class, constructed only two months ago. Captain Xan was not taking particularly kindly to the careless miners scratching the paint job, nor did he appreciate that he was sitting idle in a titan class vessel babysitting miners. Despite the size of the ship, the humming of some of the loading systems of midships point defense batteries was audible when they were onlined. A few green lights illuminated on the screen to his right as a few 140mm rotary railguns on the ship s port side reduced a 20m chunk of ice bound for the ship to ice cubes, which probably would've gone nicely with a can of Quafe.

The barges were surrounding five Charon class freighters, their plasma streams taking chunks out of an an iceball the size of a small station, nearly 50 kilometers in wide in any direction. They had carved one side of it flat, and begin carving 100 by 100 meter sections of ice out of it. With any luck, they would finish it before the end of the day. The cluster of asteroids had only recently been detected drifting into the system. They were immediately quarantined by the Caldari Navy to be mined, refined, and stashed away. With tensions rising over territory with the Gallente, the Caldari Navy was preparing for things to get ugly. The Gallente had been getting more and more aggressive, strengthening their borders with thousands of ships, and the Caldari were getting increasingly concerned about a violent conflict arising. They didn't want a war, and were being very careful not to provoke a conflict, but then again, the Gallente weren't likely to give them a choice. Despite not having been aggressive in the past, tensions had been rising over long standing territorial disputes for years. Sooner or later, there would be violence.

The Eyrie was a prototype modular Leviathan class. Advanced reactors, and reinforced structuring. The only thing that rivaled the ship's tactical computers were some of the most advanced capsuleer ships, and even those barely came close. HSC-241 was her designation. Four enormous railguns, the largest ever built complimented eight capital torpedo launchers loaded with advanced torpedoes built to be faster, and packed with high speed detonation charges. Not many things would be able to escape them.

"Captain, tactical. We ve just been pinged by a long range scanning probe. Signal pattern is indicative of a combat scanning probe." the tactical officer said in a somewhat elevated voice across the bridge. This worried the captain. CONCORD had designated Perimeter a 0.9 sec system. Nobody had any reason to be running a combat scan out here. If the scan had hit the Eyrie, the probe had been at least 4 AU outside of the system s edge to begin with. "Gravimetrics, report all contacts. he ordered. No contacts captain. replied the detection systems officer."

"We've just been pinged again, four probes this time." said the TSO. Now there was a problem. Four probe hits wasn't a coincidence. Someone was looking for them. "Engineering, status on cloaking systems?" asked Xan. By the time he finished his sentence, the engineering systems officer was already telling him that cloaking systems were operable. "Right then, ESO, cloak us up." he ordered. "Cloak active, we're invisible." reported the ESO.

Chances were they hadn't been detected, or at least it was unlikely they had been distinguished from the barges, not to mention gravimetric interference from the ice field. Five pings, then eight. In the span of 10 minutes, someone had hit them with a full barrage of probes, with combat indicative wave patterns. That wasn't an accident. Someone was trying to find him, and the likelihood of them being friendly was nearly nonexistent. What was worse was that none of the ships present were those of capsuleers; CONCORD wasn't going to interfere in a state-on-state war. Xan, however, was. Bold though it was, he doubted any kind of attack force in a 0.9 was going to be ready to fight a titan. The crews were likely smuggled in, supplied ships by the capsuleer market. An old tactic used in a somewhat different manner by the Gallente during the Gallente-Caldari war.

He was starting to go over the implications of a fight in his head when the flash appeared on the main monitor at the front of the bridge. "Contact, twelve clicks! More ships dropping out of warp! 87 contacts, looks like 65 Domini, ten Oneri, five ceptors, seven contacts unknown. It s an attack fleet sir, looks pretty heavy. Looks like they're landing about 80 kilometers offboard, bearing 270, elevation 020, probably launching sentries." exclaimed the TSO. Something wasn't right. Something was off here. Seven unknown ships? At this range, anything would be registered by the ship's computers. "Sound general quarters! Communications, tell the civies to haul ass. Tactical, I want detailed info on those unknowns, imagery, grav signatures, and drive plume analysis. ESO, standby to decloak. They re not going to get all the barges, they re after the heavies." he shouted. He would wait for them to form up, then he would mow them down efficiently.

"Conn tactical, analysis complete. The unknowns are definitely Gallente, but no transponders, no ID, nothing. Size puts them in the strategic cruiser to battlecruiser range. Looks like hold on, something's up." the TSO trailed off. "Come on then, spit it out!" Xan yelled. "Domis dropping sentries, oneri chaining. Sir, the barges aren't warping off. They're launching drones!" This wasn t going to end well. Those barges could probably inflict minor losses, but they would get mowed down. He had to act now- it was way too late to wonder if this was a good idea.

"ESO, conn, kill the cloak. Tactical, standby point defense cannons, divert power to railguns, I want those Oneri dead and I want them dead now. Point defense cannons, mow down the ceptors and then hit anything that gets close enough. Torpedoes, domis." He took a brief break to let the ship decloak and took a sip of his tea. "Lets end this quickly and go home." He was not going to toy with his prey, he was going to wipe them out quickly and efficiently. This was the pride of the Caldari Navy, an experimental titan. He was having none of their nonsense. This was awfully bold, attacking the Caldari Navy in Perimeter. It was, however a mistake.

 **Cliffhanger. I know. I m mean, but hey, I can t just release it all at once. By the time of this being uploaded, I've gone through several litres of tea and a few electro-swing mixes making the next chapter. This story is going to wander wildly, and it's going to drift wherever it wants. Honestly, it's going to be you lot that tell me where to take this story, so suggestions are welcome. I just needed something to kick it off, and why not some sort of supposedly even encounter. Also, I apologize if there are some grammatical errors but the file got a little bit messed up when it was imported. It deleted all apostrophes and quotation marks, as well as turning all exclamation marks into periods.**

Anyways, reviews and suggestions appreciated. Cheers.

 _ **Copyright Notice: EVE Online, the EVE logo, and all recognizable features of the EVE Online universe are the sole property of CCP hf.**_


	2. Discovered Attack

The first tungsten shell generated a loud bang throughout the ship as the fore dorsal 2200mm railgun's rotary assisted hydraulic loading bay rammed the first shell into it's firing chamber. The capacitors promptly began charging as radiator ports opened to cool the superconducting conduits to the hugely powerful electromagnets that would propel the shell out of the barrel at more that two hundred thousand meters per second. It would take less than a second to reach the first Oneiros. The primary fire control computers were now in automatic mode, identifying targets within certain parameters for certain armaments, and then passing the firing solution to independent tracking and fire control computers operating the enormous 2200mm rail guns, or to the warheads of the fifty meter long torpedoes housed in massive launch bays, or to the point defense cannon network.

The next boom was more violent. Fire control computers made last-second adjustments just before massive hydraulic shocks recoiled as a small explosive charge began initial acceleration of the first shell. It accelerated down the two-hundred and fifty meter barrel past fifty electromagnets, shutting each off as it passed. In just under a quarter of a second, it found it's mark on the first Oneiros, just barely missing primary nanite emitters and passing straight through the engineering section of the ship. The shell from the aft dorsal railgun also slightly missed, but this one impacted the massive energy transfer coils absorbing and sending energy between the networked reactors of the Oneiros group. With the transfer array's primary control circuit atomized, it quickly backfired, overloading the reactor whose control computers couldn't cut the power output fast enough. In the span of seven seconds, the first Oneiros had been almost vaporized by a reactor failure.

The first Dominix had also not faired particularly well either, as four of the precision missiles, two of them nuclear, had acquired a guidance lock on the ship who appeared to be leading the fleet. Brilliantly engineered Gallente point defense blasters were successful in taking down one of the enormous torpedoes, but given their size and power, it wasn't going to make much of a difference. Without any gasses to superheat, the one remaining nuclear torpedo detonated upon smashing into the particle shield of the Dominix, emitting a blinding light, and a blast of electromagnetic radiation across the spectrum, and the shield emitters of the armor specialized Dominix could do little to stop the torpedo from overloading them, though a nuclear detonation beyond direct contact of the hull had done little to the armor of the Dominix. However, the two other torpedoes, with no shielding left to protect the hull of the attacking fleet's flagship, quite easily found their way to critical components of the ship. One impacted the primary nanite pumps on the front of the ship, but the hole was quickly sealed by the armor repair nanites, and the pumps would take little time to repair themselves. The engines, however, were not so lucky. The primary ion drive system of the main engines could push the ship along at no slow speed, but they were precise, delicate machines. The explosive warhead of the second torpedo didn't completely penetrate the armor, but it got close enough as to sever connections between the reactor and the giant electromagnets that suspended superheated plasma in chambers just forward of the engine nozzles. Without full control over the plasma, it quickly began melting through the suspension chamber, and then melting bulkhead after bulkhead until venting gasses had caused the plasma to disperse. With cascading violent decompressions along most of the ship, and fires in dozens of places, the ship quickly tried to align out and enter warp, but the warp core in the engineering section of the ship just forward of the engine compartment had not survived the engine breach unharmed. As the warp drive activated, weakened power conduits overloaded and exploded, severing the reactor from the warp drive. Four more explosive torpedoes reduced the ship to a barely recognizable pile of scrap, completely splitting the ship in two just aft of the primary nanite pumps, and then reducing the halves to twisted, partially molten wrecks.

After a minute or so, the mining barges had started to get the message, and less than 50 remained in the ice field. Three of the five Charons had warped out, and the other two had begun aligning out, rolling to face the attacking fleet with the underside of their ships and turning hard while jettisoning massive blocks of ice in an attempt to shield themselves from the hail of sentry gun fire, however, this turned out to be entirely pointless as said hail of sentry gun fire was actually a panicked attempt at doing some damage to the massive ship that had appeared out of nowhere and had very promptly demonstrated an inherent ability to deal catastrophic amounts of damage very quickly. Indeed, the upper two railguns aboard the Eyrie were already preparing to fire again. Massive hydraulic lifts had moved a new shell into place just in time for the shocks to return the cannon to it's normal position, where more enormous hydraulic pistons shoved the new shell forward into the firing chamber. All that the fire control computers were waiting for now was the massive capacitor banks, who where just passing 70% charge after only ten seconds. The massive torpedo bays took only a few seconds to reload, as advanced magazine handling systems loaded torpedoes into tubes leading to the launchers, where final loading was completed by hydraulically actuated arms moved them to launch positions while they wirelessly downloaded guidance information from ballistic control computers deep in the heart of the ship.

Within ten minutes, little had been done to the Eyrie, as the reinforced shields had only dropped down to 87%. Any normal Leviathan would be in perhaps a significantly worse situation, but this was the experimental titan Eyrie. By now, only two of the Oneri remained, and the interceptors unlucky enough too land within range were cut down within seconds unless they warped out. With ten Domini remaining, most having been destroyed or warped out, the fleet was making an attempt at trying to escape, but they weren't going to get anywhere. Caldari Navy forces had already locked down the gates. The unknown ships later identified as experimental dedicated tackling Protei having closed to within stabbing range in an attempt to perform their role stood no chance against dozens of rotary railguns and guided rocket launchers designed to take down everything from missiles, to interceptors, or deal massive damage on a broadside volley to anything alongside, should it come within three kilometers.

By this point, Xan was just trying to kill them faster. He was simply done playing about. He simply wanted to get it over with, and go get another cup of tea. The last thing any of the remaining ten Domini crews saw was the blinding white plasma and EM beam of the Eyrie's Scythe-type doomsday. The encounter, start to finish, lasted eleven minutes.

 **And that's that. I decided to write this chapter in something of a specator POV, trying to make this chapter a bit more like a proper space battle. I just wanted to write a badass space battle, and I did. I don't think it turned out terribly poorly either. Then again, that's just my opinion, and I'm biased. Tell me what you think! Drop a review! I need those!  
**

 **Cheers, o7, and fly safe.**


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